Talk:Rifles/RFC archive
RFC 1 I have mixed feelings on the reorganization of this page. Yes, it's good to distinguish crafted from looted/rewarded weapons... but is that distinction necessary at the topmost level? Or was it enough to simply state "No schematic (insert reason here)" for each of the entries? I'm not sure. We should think about this page from the average user's point of view. Which would the average visitor value more highly: a single sorted list of all rifles in the game, or two sorted lists of rifles, one of crafted weapons and the other of looted/quest weapons? It's hard to say. Thoughts? --Influenza 22:59, 16 Aug 2005 (CEST) : I like em because I always want to know what I can buy and what I have to loot. If you don't like it I will change it back however. :: Let's give it a few days for other people to comment. No need to undo all that work just yet :). And as a final request, please end all your comments on Talk pages with this: --~~~~. That will automatically leave your name and the time of your post at the end of your comment, like this: --Influenza 23:19, 16 Aug 2005 (CEST) I like em because I always want to know what I can buy and what I have to loot. If you don't like it I will change it back however. The ideal here is to get the information fast. Without any sort of organization, just a generic listing of the stuff, I got frustrated and went to another site. --Careos 23:21, 16 Aug 2005 (CEST) : Ive been thinking about this for a while and although not very beautiful in form, I am the one who always tend to say: Form follows function., so Im with Careos. If you get to know something about a new rifle, first question is always: Where did you get that? or translated, is it a quest reward/loot or can I bother my WS of choice with a request? Idealy you would have a short table sorting them all into incaftable/looted/ - energy/kinetic - lvl and skill requierments, but somehow I feel that might be an overkill. --5C0UT 10:45, 17 Aug 2005 (CEST) ::Separating weaponsmith weapons and quest/loot weapons seems ideal, to me. It's quite clear in the table of contents. We should just clarify whether the non-weaponsmith weapons are granted directly by a quest/loot, or if a schematic is looted. Just like the crafters apron, it might not be a schematic you can learn, but you might still have to craft it.--Tandalo 11:16, 17 Aug 2005 (CEST) : I disagree. I think the first thing I want to know about a rifle is "What kind is it", and so I think alphabetically by name makes the most sense. If we want to put together some sidebar indicies, that would be helpful too. Maybe a 'Crafted/Looted Rifles' and 'Rifles by Damage Type' would help. --Zanfar 23:26, 17 Aug 2005 (CEST) ::I like the changes. If you are looking for a specific rifle, you can search the list. If you are just browsing all rifles, you browse knowing whether you can go out and buy the rifle, or whether you need to complete a quest to get it. --YGR 23:41, 17 Aug 2005 (CEST) Good points all around, but I have a few issues/arguments. First: yes, the "can I buy it or must I earn it?" question is very important... but it's a question that's already answered no matter which way we organize the page. Someone walks up to me and asks what rifle I'm holding; I reply "Trandoshan Hunting Rifle", they come here and find the entry and see that it's a quest reward. They can find this information regardless of the way the page is organized, so long as it's possible for them to find the entry in the first place. So this aspect of the issue, while important, isn't really relevant to the discussion, because either way the user still has to read the weapon entry to find out where it comes from. Sure, the new organization means they can skip part of the process if their weapon is crafted, but it does nothing for looted/rewarded weapons; knowing a weapon is a quest reward doesn't do you much good, and the first question will immediately be "but where do I get it?", which again requires reading the entry. So the issue to me becomes this: who is the average visitor to this article, what are they likely trying to figure out, and which organization helps them most efficiently? There are probably three types of people looking at this page: newbies who need a new gun for their CL; collectors looking for rare weapons; and random players who hear of a weapon in guild chat or on the bazaar and would like to know its stats and where it comes from. Unfortunately each of the three would prefer a different organization: the newbie would like guns sorted by CL, the collector by source (looted, quest, crafted), and the random player simply alphabetically to make searching more efficient. So maybe we need more than one page for this. Maybe revert Rifles back to a simple alphabetical list, and write up an intro with links to other sortings of the weapons. A little more work to keep them all updated, but it may be the best way to solve the problem. Perhaps add Crafted rifles, and simply make it a table of all crafted rifles, with information crafters are likely interested in: link to schematic, CL of gun, skill box where schematic is granted, and a link back to the main page. Then the same for Rare rifles (open to suggestions on a better title): also a table, with entries including gun CL, if it's looted or rewarded, where to loot it/what quest grants it, if it's bio-linked, and again a link back to the main page. That way we present multiple views of the same data, while only having to maintain one copy of each rifle's main stats. This is sorta what I'm thinking: and That turned out way longer than I anticipated, so apologies in hindsight :). Is that overkill? Can we get away with just one page? --Influenza 10:12, 18 Aug 2005 (CEST) :I still say we should keep the categories as the page currently is organized. For newbies looking for particular combat level weapons (and I've been in this situation several times), it's not that hard to find what's available. Sure, you have to look through the list, but the format makes the CL stand out and easy to spot. Random visitors can have just an easy time browsing the listing whether all weapons are alphabetized or just each category. I think the Table of Contents at the top makes it very clear and easy to understand that there are mulitple sections of weapons. What we should do, however, is follow Influenza's idea in that the format for each weapon should be different for each section. The quest/loot section should have a clear heading of where to get the weapon, for example, why crafted weapons have links to schematics. The extra pages for resorted tables seems overkill to me. --Tandalo 12:08, 18 Aug 2005 (CEST) :: Im with Tandalo on this. We already have more than enough work, maintaining multiple pages with the same information will just clutter our work more, also the way it is now is still easy enough to handle, as I stated before there are more categories but plain is beautiful. Lets keep it simple and as it is now ;) --5C0UT 14:45, 18 Aug 2005 (CEST) : As a recent newbie (I was CL 25 after the CU), I have approached the weapon pages from all 3 of Influenza's perspectives. As a newbie, I scrolled through the list of rifles to find the ones appropriate to my CL, drooling over the ones out of my reach, but also informing myself about what lay ahead of me, what I could use when I reached lvl 40, lvl 54, etc. The alphabetical list was helpful, but the craftable/questable distinction was vital to me too. As a collector, I really wanted to know if a gun could be made by a WS or had to be picked up in a quest (perfect example - the sweet-looking but underpowered DC15). Finally, I have heard about guns in the forums or elsewhere, and wanted to know where it comes from, in Influenza's own words. The craftable/questable distinction is vital here too. : In other words, I agree with both Tandalo and Scout (er, 5C0UT) that the craftable/questable distinction is more useful than not, and it results in giving you the most information at the lowest level of complexity. My $0.02. --YGR 18:19, 18 Aug 2005 (CEST) Well, it looks like the vote goes in favor of applying the crafted/looted organization to the other weapons pages. Let's give this another day in case anyone has final comments to add. --Influenza 21:26, 19 Aug 2005 (CEST) : Alrighty, the change passes. Yay for the democratic process! --Influenza 21:38, 22 Aug 2005 (CEST) ---- For some reason typing "RFC 1" automagically makes a wiki link to some weird website... will investigate further. --Influenza 23:43, 24 Aug 2005 (CEST) : Ok, that was an easy fix. Wonder what the software really uses it for... --Influenza 23:48, 24 Aug 2005 (CEST) RFC 2 While we are at it, should we change the weapon template to include these stats? There is a pretty good forum page in the WS forum about these http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=weaponsmith&message.id=80981 DXR6 Carbine The only carbine with range greater than 60m. * Combat Level: 40 * Damage Type: Energy * Max Damage Cap : 888 (with 158 tissues/power cells) * Speed Cap: * SAC Cap: 82 * Range: 0-65m * DXR6 Carbine : p.s. I had this one specially researched to see the max damage cap since this is the only carbine with a 65 m range. Wanted to see if I can surprise some riflemen ;) --5C0UT 10:55, 23 Aug 2005 (CEST) * 5c0ut - My concern is that too much information would be overwhelming to a casual browser. Why not indent the caps (and add a link to a definition of a cap) so that a newbie/casual user could skip this information. It would look something like this: DXR6 Carbine The only carbine with range greater than 60m. * Combat Level: 40 * Damage Type: Energy * Range: 0-65m * DXR6 Carbine ** Cap:Max Damage: 888 (with 158 tissues/power cells) ** Cap:Speed: ** Cap:SAC: 82 My $0.02. --YGR 20:41, 23 Aug 2005 (CEST) I think the additional info would be useful to anyone shopping for a weapon. If you know the best possible stats, it's a lot easier to find the best weapon on the bazaar or in vendor search. I like YGR's format, especially with having CAP linked for easy definition/reminder.--Tandalo 21:26, 23 Aug 2005 (CEST) :I wrote the CAP page, so we can have a point of reference.--Tandalo 21:37, 23 Aug 2005 (CEST) : I like YGRs format too when should we start implementing them, wait till we got more comments or start right away ? --5C0UT 01:11, 24 Aug 2005 (CEST) I dunno, I don't like the repeated use of Cap. How about nesting the three cap types, like this: * (...) * Stat caps: ** Max Damage: 888 (with 158 tissues/power cells) ** Speed: 2.17 ** SAC: 82 * DXR6 Carbine Is the "(with 158 tissues/power cells)" necessary? I don't think that's something the casual visitor would be interested in (or even know what it means). And while we're at it, we should also remove the Special Attack Cost sections from weapons, since they're tied to experimentation and not static. --Influenza 23:14, 24 Aug 2005 (CEST) : Influenza's is a but more cleaned up. What I suggest is that we add the slicing cap in brackets rather the tissues and put the information about the tissues somewhere on the schematic page so, so the crafter finds it. : Regarding SAC yes, that should be somewhere on top, probadly as well as speed since referring to Reference on the WS forum There is a general speed cap for each weapon type (at least for the +lvl 54 weapons), but the DXR6 is the only carbine with a SAC cap of 82 since it uses some rifle components and has a larger range. --5C0UT 11:16, 25 Aug 2005 (CEST) :: How do slicing caps work? Is there some absolutely-maximum value for damage/speed that can't be reached by crafting, but cuts off slicing if it would take the weapon past the cap? --Influenza 04:40, 27 Aug 2005 (CEST) ::: How do slicing caps work? --5C0UT 11:36, 27 Aug 2005 (CEST) ---- So now we have: DXR6 Carbine The only carbine with range greater than 60m. * Combat Level: 40 * Damage Type: Energy * Range: 0-65m * Stat caps: ** Max damage: 888 ** Speed: 2.17 ** SAC: 82 * DXR6 Carbine Anything else? It seems that slicing caps are universally lower than crafting caps for all weapons, so is it necessary to put them? --Influenza 21:41, 5 Sep 2005 (CEST) : I think adding slicing cap information would be too much information, and likely not available for most of the weapons in game. I like this format, looks slick and easy to skim through. --Tandalo 22:08, 5 Sep 2005 (CEST) :: Ok, page updated, with a few other minor tweaks. Comments? --Influenza 00:26, 6 Sep 2005 (CEST) :Looks great!--Tandalo 06:40, 6 Sep 2005 (CEST) : yeah looks great! sorry i was abscent for a while, ... moved to Talk:Squad_Leader --5C0UT 01:18, 8 Sep 2005 (CEST)